In the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium there is only war.
Now, that's not true. There are births, deaths and marriages. There is drinking water. There's music. There's fast cars and bikini models. If you dare delve into the depths of the Black Library and come out clutching a dog-eared paperback that has clearly been loved by more than its fair share of owners, you'll find out all about what makes the universe tick behind that grand proclamation of there being only war. You'll barely regret it at all.
The premise of the universe behind Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 is a simple enough one to understand. Humanity is surrounded. We are by far one of the most numerous and prolific species in the galaxy, owing to the fact that it's fun to make people. People are the strength of the Imperium, and they have to be! The Immortal God-Emperor is sustained by the sacrifice of a thousand souls every single day so that he can be maintained in his deathless state seated on the Golden Throne which amplifies his immense psychic power. If he woke up, rest assured, he'd be so damned mad. He never wanted to be worshipped as a god! Humanity has become an ass-backwards totalitarian regime based on a few entirely faulty assumptions about the God-Emperor's plans for mankind and we're even getting that wrong. Dogma and superstition have replaced reason and hope, and it is by the countless billions that pour their blood into the grand machine of the Imperium that humanity endures another day rather than being snuffed out in a universe entirely inimical to us.
Everywhere there are enemies. Aliens from across the distant stars. Daemons bubbling forth from gaping rents in reality. Traitors, heretics and mutants amongst us. We are fucked. But while the forces of darkness gather like vultures around the limping, staggeringly vast Imperium of Mankind, there is hope.
In the early days of the Imperium, everything was great. We were scientists, scholars and artists. We went to the farthest reaches of the stars and came back, grinning and giving everyone back home a cheerful thumbs-up. Colonies were formed, distant holdings which pledged fealty to the distant memory of earth. Though they would eventually become entire empires that had forgotten Old Terra, the time would come again when the Emperor would tread the stars with his genetically manufactured sons, the Primarchs, at the head of the Great Crusade to retake, reclaim and rescue the sprawled colonies of humanity from the perils of the universe. Then? Well, I'll let a quote from Doctor Who suffice to answer that part.
"There was a war. Everybody lost."
The Imperium as it is today is a sprawling, bloated nightmare of beaurecratic process, vicious battles for power amongst the privelidged elite and the ceaseless struggle amongst the literal tide of the lower classes for just another day clinging to life in an Imperium as without malice as compassion. I can not explain enough just how cool I think the Imperium is. Somehow, it is everything which is abhorrent to the modern mind. Unreasonable, vicious, blinkered by ignorance and unreasonable hatred. Simultaneously, they are the good guys! The great gears of the Imperium turn slowly and it is only by the constant vigilance of those amongst humanity's protectors that the worst the galaxy has to offer will be thrown back into the darkness each time they gather their strength to strike. It balances on a knife edge of utterly ridiculous satire and poignant parody of our own modern civilization with enemies that are straight out of a list of Saturday morning cartoon villains.
The Orks are a savage, barbaric race that seek only to test themselves in combat against whatever foe crosses their path. The Eldar are ancient starfarers that jealously protect what little remains of their fractured empire. The Tyranids are a living wave of chitin, blades and teeth that devour all before them and leave only bare rocks in their wake. The Necrons rise from their eons-long dormancy to begin the systematic extermination of sentient life in the galaxy. The Tau are an upstart race with a bright, golden philosophy of the Greater Good that harbours a shadowy secret. Chaos is the raw, primal enemy at the beating heart of the universe, the congealed emotion, ambition and spite of all thinking creatures throughout history.
It just so happens that the common man is not the only weapon in humanity's arsenal. Arrayed against this vast rogue's gallery of utter bastards that seem to populate the universe are humanity's greatest defenders, the Space Marines. Forged from ancient science long forgotten and now practiced as an art by those with the means to make men from the material of millenia-lost Primarchs, a single Space Marine is the match of a hundred mortal men. A demi-god in every sense, he is clad in the finest armour and given the mightiest weapons in humanity's arsenal. With just a thousand brother Marines to a Chapter and scant few of those in the Imperium, there is less than one Space Marine for every world in the Imperium.
But let me tell you about the really cool guys in the Imperium.
The Imperial Guard.
Take your average human being. Raise him in the nightmarish reality of the far future. Hand him a lasgun and what equates to 'Being a Guardsman for Dummies.' Now take him and set him against the various horrors that the universe has to throw at him.
That's it. Doesn't get any more complicated than that. This is a universe which is populated by the worst that a bunch of guys in the eighties could come up with. Ancient, armoured spirits in mechanical bodies that feel no pain and whose weapons can flense the flesh from your bones with a glancing blow. Enemies whose weapons fire nothing less vile and horrific than beetles that bore straight to your core, unerringly seeking out the heart, lungs and other vital organs, all whilst chewing furiously. Entities that are waiting for the chance to push their way forcibly between realities by punching a hole from the nightmarish realm of Chaos straight through the front of your head and exploding out of your body in a shower of gore and splintered bone!
Yeah! Here's your lasgun and your book. You go fuck 'em up, kid. Not good enough for you? Okay, here's a knife. Be thankful. Some guys don't even get the lasgun. Entire regiments of Imperial Guard, the vast fighting machine that forms the bulwark against the myriad enemies gathering at the Imperium's door, are sent into battle with the rags and sticks from their homeworlds. Which is where the crux of the matter comes to the fore. A regiment's homeworld determines a lot about their character. You think every world in the Imperium is like the earth that we know today? Of course not! You thought the bad guys were horrifying? There's such a thing as a death world. Catachan, amongst others, falls under this category. Catachan is a world on which there are giant enemy crabs (close enough) with claws that would crush a battletank. You will find heretic ants (they go for the soles!) that are minute enough to enter the bloodstream unnoticed, lay their eggs in your heart and let their larvae begin eating their way free of the host. Oh, and don't breathe the swamp gas. You don't want to know what that'll do to you...
What strikes me about the Imperium is, therefore, pretty simple. Take a look at the bad guys. They're big, they're mean and they're dangerous. They're meant to be. The Space Marines are big, mean and dangerous. They're meant to be! But in a universe intent on devouring humanity, crushing us entirely and removing all evidence of us from history, living in an Imperium which is as magnificently brutal as it is protective of mankind... it is people who are the ultimate badasses in the game of Warhammer 40,000. In a strange sort of way, that's what I like most about the game as well as the fluff and the history of the universe. At its very core, humanity is the strength of the Imperium. Fighting extinction tooth and nail.
In the grim darkness of the far future, we kick the shit out of anything that looks at us funny.
If you're curious, there's all sorts of places you can find out more. Hit up Google! Check out Steam for Dawn of War! Pick up Dark Heresy, the RPG from Fantasy Flight! Fight the future!
(I totally forgot what the point of this article was going to be when I started eating pizza about half way through, and cock it, I'm not one to edit a thing! So you get this rambling love letter to the future.)
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